


Retrospect

by superfundsite (orphan_account)



Category: Red Dwarf (UK TV)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Post-Season/Series 08, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:14:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24320383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/superfundsite
Summary: Lister wakes Rimmer up in the middle of the night, and Rimmer's reflexes prove to not come in handy this time.
Relationships: Dave Lister/Arnold Rimmer
Comments: 7
Kudos: 45





	Retrospect

**Author's Note:**

> Just something i typed up because i couldnt sleep. You could also take this, as i realized halfway through the fic, as a way to explain the presence of the Dog in Parallel Universe (considering that Arlene would have been the one to smuggle the Dog's ancestor aboard however). No editing or beta as always (we die like men)

Lister awoke with a start, hand reaching out to grab at whatever’s nearest.

That being said, it was Rimmer.

With a jolt, and without a sound, the hologram who had been peacefully asleep besides him, curled up between a pillow and Lister, gracefully swung his fist out, and clocked Lister in the jaw, without as much as a huff or hair out of place.

Lister cried out in pain, falling out of bed, and landing hard on his shoulder. Pain blossomed in his bones, and his head felt like a steel drum was reverberating around his brain. His teeth hurt, but he ran his tongue over them, and they all seemed to be firmly in place. He groaned in pain.

“Lister, are you- oh my god! Lister!” Rimmer’s voice went from a steady, confident tone, to a shrill, nasal whine within the span of milliseconds.

Rimmer hopped out of bed, looking much more frazzled than before, as he realized who had woken him up. “Oh, god, Lister, are you alright?” He knelt down besides Lister, who was too busy cradling his jaw as he lay in the fetal position on the ground. He gently peeled Lister’s hand away from his face, and quickly assessed the damage. 

“Never been better,” Lister managed to wheeze out.

Rimmer scowled as he held Lister by the back of his head securely, and his fingers traced over the spot where he had nailed Lister- right on the right side of his lower jaw. He grimaced as he came across the beginning of a dark bruise forming on Lister’s light brown skin. 

“I’m sorry, I’m still- ugh, I’m sorry.” Rimmer stroked Lister’s cheek, and pressed a kiss to his unaffected side. Lister sighed and slumped into it. 

“‘S okay. Not your fault. Shouldn’t’ve startled you like that.”

“No, it is. I’m still… wound up. Five years of being Ace does that to you. It’s happened before.”

Lister shrugged.

Wait, what?

“What d’you mean, it’s happened before? Take someone to bed with you, then when they wake up to take a piss, you knock their teeth out of their skull?”

Rimmer narrowed his eyes, and dropped his head. “I resent that,” he said, getting up to open the icebox where Lister kept cans of beer and Cat stored one of his many stashes of milk and chilled oysters. He rummaged in the top shelf for the package of frozen peas, stored for emergencies such as this, opting to keep the steak for a more grievous wound.

Peas in hand, he returned to Lister’s side, and pressed the bag of frozen legumes to his purpling skin. Lister sighed in relief at the cold against his bruise, and took the bag from Rimmer’s hand.

“I’m sorry again. But no, I did not take someone to bed, and then knock their teeth out of their skull.” Rimmer huffed and sat down, unfolding his shins from beneath him to tuck them against his chest, as he patted the top of Lister’s spare hand. “I only gave them a little kiss. With my fist. Purely by accident, and no dentist needed afterwards.”

“Ah yes, time to hear more about the Adventures of Ace, Space Slag.”

“It wasn’t that frequent!” Rimmer whinged. “It only happened once or twice. Once with the Crown Prince of Belagosia and another with-”

“Alright, alright, I get the point. Can’t even be your first, huh?”

“You’re the first that matters, though.” Rimmer pointed out smugly. 

Lister rolled his eyes.

“Sure thing, Major Tom.” He gestured for Rimmer to lean in, and once the hologram complied, he put his head down upon his shoulder, and closed his eyes. The fuzzy, linty warmth of Rimmer’s flannels and the coolness of the peas on his bruise felt familiar to Lister. He’s reminded of being young again, curling up at his grandmother’s knee after a brawl in the streets, watching re-runs of Bonanza and game shows. He closed his eyes, and could almost smell cigarette smoke, liquor, and ivory soap, just like his grandmother.

Oh. Wait.

That’s just him.

He sighed, and breathed in deep. Now he could pick up that sharp staticky scent that clings to Rimmer, the charge in the air before a storm, the subtle humidity of the water molecules in the air steaming and condensing in the presence of hard light.

A new kind of comfort to be had, he thought to himself, as he tangled his fingers with Rimmer’s, and yawned.

“Hey, Rimmer. Tell me a story.”

“Hm?”   
“A story, Rimmer. Something about being brave and heroic.”

“Ugh. Alright.”

Rimmer racked his brains to think of something brave and heroic. Sure, during his career as Ace, he had done plenty of things that counted as incredibly brave and heroic. 

But Rimmer didn’t think that any of them really felt genuine. Sure, it might’ve been him doing it, and sure, he could tell them in front of Kryten, the Cat, maybe Kochanski when she was still part of the gang. During supper, before everyone went to bed, and he felt like maybe he still had that “spark of greatness” in him.

He couldn’t ever tell one in front of Lister all by himself. 

Suddenly, those true stories became tall tales, lies, things another version of himself had lived. It had no place in this relationship, he thought to himself, when he first kissed Lister’s mouth. That’s not me rescuing people from burning buildings and breaking the sound barrier just to get from point A to point B. 

Even now, Rimmer would wake up, and look at himself in the mirror, and think that’s not me. I’m not here. An impostor.

“Rimmer?”

“Huh? Oh, yes.” Rimmer cleared his throat and hummed thoughtfully. “I don’t know if I have many.”

“Rimmer, you were Ace for five years, you’ve got to have something.”

Rimmer threw him a sharp look, and Lister felt his chest tighten momentarily at the vulnerability in his soft hazel-brown eyes.

“I happen to have a story of when I was… sixteen? Attending secondary school. I was minding my business outside of a corner shop, when a mangy looking dog was being harassed by some young hooligans.” Rimmer tilted his head to think about the memory deeply, or at least look the part. “It was a poor thing, all skinny and bony, and they were kicking it around. I didn’t like that, and even though I had a fear of social interaction, years of anxiety and untreated neuroses that made me almost a gibbering idiot in the face of adversity, I did what any normal person would do, when confronted with animal abuse.”

“Don’t tell me you ran at them screaming with your arms flapping like a duck on amphetamines.”

Rimmer gave Lister a beaming smile. 

“I did exactly that. They ran off, because they heard of me having the most spectacular fits of rage at school, leaving people in the hospital and whatnot, and because most of the students who knew of me thought I was stark raving mad.”

“You are, Rimmer.”

“Nevertheless,” Rimmer continued, without skipping a beat, “I now had this tiny, mangy dog at my feet, the poor thing shivering in the dirt, and I picked her up in my blazer to take her to the nearest vet.” 

Lister smiled. “Aw. See, you’re not an awful smegger after all.”

“I’d hope not. She actually had a clean bill of health, just all muddy from being kicked around and half starved. So after I washed her in the tub of my flat, and fed her the last of my scraps from dinner, I christened her-”

“Alexandra?”

“No,” Rimmer rolled his eyes. “I named her Sobekneferu.”

“Ah. Nice name for a teacup Yorkie there.”

“She wasn’t a teacup Yorkie. She was some kind of terrier. Had a moustache and eyebrows and everything.”

“I hope you didn’t call her Sobekneferu the whole time, that sounds like a mouthful.”

“No, I didn’t. I called her Sobie.” Rimmer smiled fondly at the memory. “She was my best friend, for years. I used to hide her in my closet when the building inspector came, because pets weren’t allowed, and she was so quiet, never got caught in all the time I lived there, until I moved out and found a nicer place with a proper park right by it. She’d run around for ages and not get tired, play fetch, chase scared children, and I felt… normal. Well adjusted. Just for those few moments. And even after that, when she would just sit next to me when I studied, I felt… relaxed.” 

The look on Rimmer’s face was positively radiant. Lister’s heart softened like butter. Rimmer had a pet and it didn’t die within days out of sheer, secondhand sickness?

“What happened to her?”

Rimmer sighed.

“Well, when I signed up for JMC, they had a rule not to bring pets aboard their vessels above what could fit in a small tank, like a fish or a frog or something. No dogs at all. So I left her with a… a neighbor.” The way Rimmer said neighbor made Lister think it was anything but.

“A neighbor?”

Rimmer shifted uncomfortably. “My first… ex. He was. He was nice. He was okay. Twice my age, a retired flight coordinator for the Space Corps. He lost his arm in some freak accident and they let him go. He worked for the university library, and I met him there. We had broken up before I left, but he loved that dog, and so I let him keep her. Sent me pictures every week ‘til she died. Must’ve been a few years after I signed up, she was already old when I found her.” 

Lister was quiet. The bag of peas dripped mushily on the floor. 

“Aw man….”

“Don’t feel sorry, or bad, or anything. She was happy with him. She lived out the last of her years in a cushy townhouse with a gay intellectual instead of cooped up on board a space ship with a gay idiot.”

“I’m sure it wouldn’t have been so bad.”

“Lister, you know what almost happened to Frankenstein. What if it had happened to Sobie?”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Dog that big would be hard to hide compared to a cat, even if it was pregnant.” 

“No shoving her up an air vent.” Rimmer tipped his head back against the bunk.

Lister joined him.

It was quiet for a few minutes.

“Swelling gone down yet?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. What did you want to wake me up for, anyways?”

Lister felt his face begin to heat up.

“Had a nightmare.”

“Ah.”

“It wasn’t… awful. No getting murdered or anything. Felt like I was all alone, down in the diesel decks, and I tripped and fell and then I was falling down an endless pit. It was so real, that I reached out for anything I could, and it happened to be you.” Lister looked up at Rimmer.

Rimmer’s expression was gentle.

“Sorry again. That sounds like… not a good dream. Definitely nightmare.”

“So eloquent, Rimmer.” Lister managed a small smile, and Rimmer shakes his head.

“I knew I shouldn’t have brought you on that tour of the decks. Even if it was the beginner’s circuit, and only lasted… what, five minutes?”

“Ten, because I got claustrophobic around the eight minute mark, and you kept jabbering on about steam and pressure indicators and I would get distracted enough to keep shambling along grabbing onto your coattails.”

“Well, clearly you only absorbed around eight minutes of knowledge. And if you won’t go down into the diesel decks, that means I get to keep my oasis to myself.”

“Suits me just fine.”

Rimmer smiled, and without warning, collected Lister into his arms. Lister hummed as Rimmer hugged him close to his chest, Lister half seated in his lap. Lister quickly adjusted himself to be able to sit squarely on his thighs, and Rimmer pressed a feathery kiss on his bruise.

“Lister,” he whispered. “I wouldn’t ever let you fall. And if you do, it’d never be just you. I’d go down with you.”

“Rimmer-”

“Shush. I’m on a poetic roll. But that’s a promise, Listy. Together, or not at all. I didn’t survive that long gallivanting through space alone just to come back and forget what I’m here for. Here for you.” Rimmer kissed him, lips warm against Lister’s.

“Smeg,” Lister murmured, “and I didn’t wait five years to not keep up my end of the promise too. It goes both ways. Anything happens to you,” he broke away for breath as he kissed Rimmer again, “I’m going too.”

“Lister,” Rimmer gasped, his hands on Lister’s softening hips. 

“Rimmer,” Lister breathed out.

As they kissed and held each other in the dim, dark light of their bunk, Rimmer’s lightbee glowed faintly from his center, ebbing and pulsing like waves, and the last human alive remained blissfully unaware of it, simply holding him closer, and kissing him deeper, and his love let him.

  
  



End file.
